5 Top Tips from Interior Designers

Knowing where to begin, when contemplating a redesign of your home can often be the hardest part. Having the confidence to rip out once loved kitchen cabinets or install a restful, high end bathroom can be a daunting prospect. So here is some advice from interior designers on how to get started when planning your dream home.

Collect ideas – Start compiling a visual dossier of colour swatches, interiors, furniture and fittings to hone in on the style, look and feel you desire. Be as wild and imaginative as you want and don’t just limit your research to interior and design magazines. Look at what’s going on in the world of art and fashion as well as architecture and advertising. You never know where your inspiration may come from.

Observe the way you live – Make a record of which rooms you do what in and how much time you spend in them. You may find that you spend more time in the kitchen than you in the in the sitting room, so you can adapt your designs to make your kitchen more of a relaxing environment. However, maybe under closer inspection you will realise that you don’t have, therefore need a designated place to put shoes and coats on that may help lessen the stressful morning rush out of the door.

Pinpoint likes and gripes – Analyse the areas of your current set up that you most enjoy. It might be particular view out of a window, or an architectural feature that you fell in love with when you first looked round as a potential buyer. Alongside this, think about what does not work and try not to let sentiment get in the way of deciding what must go. There may be an original doorway into a room that is never used and preventing certain pieces of furniture from being placed in front of it, which you can say goodbye to.

Involve the whole family – If you are revamping a family home, make sure that you are catering to everyone’s needs and not just being a slave to style. You could ask your children to draw you a picture of what their perfect playroom would look like and use one or two of the ideas. That being said, installing an everlasting chocolate machine or a climbing wall might not fit in with your plans, so give them a brief outlining all of the no no’s beforehand.

Get the experts in – Redesigning your house and home takes a lot of planning, preparing and producing. Managing your family life around a building project is a job in itself, so seek help and advice from an interior design company who will work with you to turn your dream into a reality. They will be able to organise all of the elements that go into your designs using their own craftsmen and source all of the products and materials to fit your needs, minimising the stress of the beautiful transformation.

This is a featured guest post by Abby Wilkinson, who is a freelance writer and mother of three exuberant children. Having only recently moved to a new house she is excitedly planning on which room to decorate next!

Along with the colour wheel interior designers use a number of other tools. Mood boards are used to bring together ideas and to see how the design will look on a smaller scale. Mood boards will often include images, swatches of material, and paint samples. Some designers prefer to use computer software for this while others will opt for collecting the materials together and actually building a board.

Mum, wife and writer at The Ana Mum Diary. Lover of all things stylish...read my blog to see interiors, vintage, photography, fashion, beauty, travel and our love for LIFE! I also am the co-founder of the collaborative travel blog below, We Blog Travel... Amanda x